“What good is it for citizens to have guns when the government has tanks?”

From time to time, we see variations of comments like this one, pulled from one of our Facebook posts:

Curious, I do not care if people own guns, each their own, but people say we should own guns to keep the government in check. How does a gun help against a rocket fired miles away, a drone or airplane flying overhead, or a massive tank driving through your house?

It’s a fairly common question, and it deserves an answer.

The simple answer to the question is “assymetric warfare.” Smart fighters don’t put their troops in front of the enemy’s best weapons. They use their best troops against their enemy’s weak points, and exploit those weak points mercilessly.

In the hypothetical event that the federal government attempted to impose tyranny upon the citizenry of the United States, it would likely trigger the largest insurgency that the modern world has ever known.

Despite all of our awesome technology, we stink at fighting insurgencies.

We lost in Vietnam. We won the conventional war against the Iraqi military easily, but we didn’t defeat the insurgency. We’re losing Afghanistan, and our leadership has no intention of fighting to win.

All of these insurgencies have been overseas, where the supply lines were long, but relatively well-protected. The producers and supply chain itself were never threatened.

In the event of an American insurgency, it wouldn’t be a straight-up fight of partisans with rifles fighting against regime tanks, helicopters, and drones.

It would be a war where “killing” a fighter jet occurs by assassinating aircraft mechanics, or burning the homes of employees of the companies that make crucial replacement parts. It would be a war where every elected official, government employee, and skilled worker in the supply chain would be a target, every day of their lives.

In short, it would be a nasty, brutish conflict full of atrocities with no battle lines, no rear areas, no retreat, and little chance for government forces to survive over the long term.

As long as the American public outguns the military—and they do by more than 90 million firearms—no sane government would dare turn on the American people. That is the reason it is so important for the citizenry to jealously guard their Second Amendment rights.

Photo credit: Partisan forces from the Republic of Pineland in North Carolina, via the Fayetteville Observer

Bob Owens is the Editor of BearingArms.com.
Bob is a graduate of roughly 400 hours of professional firearms training classes, including square range and force-on force work with handguns and carbines. He is a past volunteer instructor with Project Appleseed. He most recently received his Vehicle Close Quarters Combat Instructor certification from Centrifuge Training, and is the author of the short e-book, So You Want to Own a Gun.
He can be found on Twitter at bob_owens.
https://bearingarms.com/author/bobowens-bearingarms/